Texas has foreclosure laws that allow lenders to foreclose on and sell homes and other real estate when the owner fails to keep up on the agreed-to mortgage payments. This presents a great opportunity to purchase Dallas foreclosures, often at a reduced price compared to the fair market value of a foreclosed home in Dallas. Banks sometimes also sell bank-owned homes on the open market. In addition, there are other types of Dallas foreclosures, such as tax sales. Buyers should learn how to find Dallas foreclosure listings for each type of Texas foreclosure sold in the area. They can then prepare bidding money and participate at public auctions to buy Dallas foreclosed properties.
Finding Dallas Bank and Tax Foreclosure Auctions
When a bank files a lawsuit to foreclose, it conducts the foreclosure sale at the county courthouse. A similar thing happens for Dallas properties foreclosed for tax delinquency. The county court clerk typically maintains a list of these Dallas foreclosure notices. In Dallas, the main county is Dallas County. This means you should contact the Dallas County Court Clerk’s office to start your search for Dallas foreclosure listings. In this case, the Dallas County website has a “Dallas County Clerk Foreclosure Notices” page online at Dallascounty.org/department/countyclerk/foreclosures.html. View the foreclosures online or visit the office and ask to be directed where the foreclosure listings are posted.
Note that parts of Dallas extend into Rockwall County and some other counties. In that case, you need to do the same basic process for finding Dallas foreclosures. However, the counties where the properties are located will have the Dallas foreclosure listings. Find the websites of those Dallas county court clerks or visit their offices to get notices of Dallas foreclosures in those counties.
Finding Bank-Owned Foreclosures For Sale in Dallas
It is not too late to try to buy a Dallas foreclosure even after the auction. In many cases, the bank actually wins the foreclosure auction. The bank then contracts with a real estate agent to list and sell the property on the open market. While it may be less likely to get a cheap Dallas foreclosed property at this stage, some good deals still exist among these bank-owned foreclosures in Dallas.
To find Dallas foreclosure listings for bank-owned homes, you can use a database that specializes in this type of foreclosed property. For example, Foreclosure.com has an online service for these properties. Yahoo! also has a service like this at Realestate.yahoo.com/Foreclosures. You can also find some sites with free listings, Sites like RealtyTrac offer a free trial for their paid services. What you can do is take a free trial on a foreclosure listing service and compare it to the free sites like FreeForeclosureDatabase.com. You can then decide if the paid services are worth the price.
At any rate, you can just search for Texas foreclosure listings or Dallas foreclosure listings when using these services. Note that you would then just call the listing agent and inquire, see the house and then make an offer on the Dallas foreclosure if you want to buy one of these bank-owned properties.
Dallas HUD Homes
HUD is a government agency that buys foreclosed homes it had initially insured through FHA. HUD then seeks to get back those losses by buying the properties at foreclosure auctions and then selling them on the open market like the banks do. To look for Dallas HUD foreclosure listings, you can go to the HUD homes listing website at Hudhomestore.com/HudHome/Index.aspx. From there, you can click on the Texas image and then narrow your search down to Dallas to find the HUD Dallas foreclosure listings.
To buy one of these homes, you contact a HUD-approved agent around Dallas to bid on the home. HUD then accepts of rejects your bid via your real estate agent. Any agent approved by HUD can walk you through the process once you have used the site to find desirable Dallas foreclosure listings.
Sources:
Dallas County Foreclosure Notices
HUD Foreclosed Properties
